There's a new set of wheels that's joined the ranks of Charlotte's food truck scene. FreshMed (facebook.com/FreshmedCLT/), a Mediterranean fusion concept that launched in June.
FreshMed stands out from many of its food truck peers, as it's 30 feet long and outfitted with a 22.5-foot long, custom-designed kitchen for the crew's cooking needs.
Tyler Lee and Norm Randall, co-founders of the food truck, operate the truck and dole out Mediterranean-inspired dishes — like the popular lamb burger — to the masses with executive chef, Chris Alves and Ryan Mollen, sales manager.
Among the four of them, they have culturally diverse backgrounds and years of restaurant experience. The quartet rolls around Charlotte as part of a bigger catering company, Fresh Eats Catering.
Creative Loafing sat down with co-founder Lee and discussed the menu and what it means to be an up-and-coming truck in an established food truck scene.
Creative Loafing: What's the "fresh" in FreshMed?
Tyler Lee: So one of the biggest things that we do is we use a lot of really high-quality ingredients. That's where the fresh part came from and FreshMed is part of a bigger company that we launched called Fresh Eats Catering. We have everything to cook on site for three to 500 people. So being able to cook everything on the truck whether it be for catering or for a food truck event creates that real fresh taste which a lot of times you don't get, especially from catering. That's my background for the last 10 years. And then picking fresh ingredients, we go shopping every single day for food, so we make sure we have the freshest stuff on the truck. I think that's quality you can taste.
Along with the lamb burger, what are some really popular menu items?
Our second biggest item and our most intriguing item is our fettuccine alfredo balls. It's an idea that I came up with, and it's almost a joke. [I was thinking], 'What if we took fettuccine pasta and alfredo sauce, wrapped it in bacon, got it into a little ball and deep-fried it?' and so that one's really taken off. We're constantly playing with different menu items.
The chicken Saltimbocca sandwich is one of my personal favorite sandwiches on the truck. It's a play on a veal salted bocca, which is one of my favorite Italian dishes. Basically it's chicken, sage, prosciutto, then we actually do a fontina halloumi cheese blend on our menu, which is really cool, so we melt that on top of it. Then we put it on naan bread with some lemon alfredo and that one is delicious. I love those flavors together.
Is there a kind of turf war with the different food trucks around town? Do some trucks have seniority on certain spots and locations?
So you would think that, because I thought that coming into this business. And it's actually the complete opposite. It's a community. And from everything that I've seen in my short time being there, the other food truck owners have embraced us and taken us into the community. I've gotten a lot of my leads from other food trucks or from them needing us to cover somewhere and things of that nature. A lot of us work at the commissary that we cook out of and there's 25 trucks there, so we all work out of the same kitchen. We're constantly talking and sharing where you were and how it was and things of that nature. It's really more of a family than it is a competition, which is something that pleasantly surprised me coming in.
